Memories In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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The power of memories, good or bad is an unknown power not know by many of us. Memories or dreams can be there to save us or kill us. In John Steinbeck's novel of Mice and Men, many characters including Lennie, Crooks, and George feel the power of memories past or future. In this essay we will focus on Lennie. One of the times Lennie portrays this is in chapter six where Lennie pictures his Aunt Clair scolding him “I told’ you an’ tol’ you,” she said. “I tol’ you, ‘Min’ George because he’s such a nice fella an’ good to you.’ But you don’t never take no care. You do bad things”(101). As you can see Lennie picks a horrible time to imagine Aunt Claire scolding him; when he is sad and alone after killing Curley's wife. This memorie shows that memories can be their to kill us because this memorie puts Lennie down even lower than he already is.The second quote comes in at the same scene as the last one. Here Lennie is sitting in the stream after he killed Curley's wife. Lennie hallucinates that a big rabbit comes and scolds Lennie again “Tend rabbits,” it said scornfully. “You crazy bastard. You ain’t fit to lick the boots of no rabbit. You’d forget ‘em and let ‘em go hungry. That’s what you’d do. An’ then what would George think”(102)? This dream put Lennie at a new low showing again how dream or memories can kill …show more content…
Lennie and I were both pushed back and moved forward by looking forward to the future and looking back on memories. Doing so allowed us both to move on with our lives rather than dwell on the past and allows the memory of the dream to dominate our futures as well. We all have dreams, but many are impossible or unrealistic. At some point, we all will have to face the reality that we have to move on with our lives and leave behind our most treasured memories. So perhaps looking forward can help us understand whether our memories are their to kill us or save
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